UNM Scientists Foresee a Challenging Future for Humanity

UNM Dis­tin­guished Pro­fes­sor of Biol­ogy Dr. James H. Brown.

Eco­nomic growth depends on energy sup­ply. In this day and age, large increases in energy will be required to fuel eco­nomic growth, increase stan­dards of liv­ing and lift devel­op­ing nations out of poverty. It is far from cer­tain, how­ever, whether exist­ing sup­plies and tech­nolo­gies will be able to meet this demand. These are the con­clu­sions of research pub­lished in the Jan­u­ary 2011 issue of Bio­Science titled, “Ener­getic Lim­its to Eco­nomic Growth,” by a group of ecol­o­gists at the Uni­ver­sity of New Mexico.

The researchers show a direct cor­re­la­tion between per capita energy use and per capita Gross Domes­tic Prod­uct across 220 coun­tries and over 24 years from 1980–2003.

To lis­ten to an inter­view with lead author and UNM Dis­tin­guished Pro­fes­sor of Biol­ogy James Brown visit: Brown inter­view.

“This rela­tion­ship is strik­ingly sim­i­lar to the rela­tion­ship between rate of metab­o­lism or energy use in organ­isms as a func­tion of their body size, and for sim­i­lar rea­sons” said UNM Dis­tin­guished Pro­fes­sor of Biol­ogy James Brown, the lead author. “Just as a body burns food energy to sur­vive and grow, an econ­omy must burn fuel in order to sus­tain itself and grow. Just as higher rates of food con­sump­tion are required to grow larger, more com­plex bod­ies, so higher rates of energy con­sump­tion are required to grow larger, more devel­oped economies that pro­vide greater lev­els of tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment and higher stan­dards of living.”

These rela­tion­ships high­light fun­da­men­tal con­straints on both bio­log­i­cal and socioe­co­nomic sys­tems that stem directly from the laws of ther­mo­dy­nam­ics and the prin­ci­ples of ecology.

Per capita energy con­sump­tion and per capita growth domes­tic prod­uct are illus­trated in the graph.

The rela­tion­ship between energy use and GDP across coun­tries can be used to esti­mate the quan­ti­ties of energy that will be required to meet expected pop­u­la­tion and eco­nomic growth in the next 15 years. Assum­ing that the world pop­u­la­tion increases to eight bil­lion and the global econ­omy con­tin­ues to grow at four per­cent per year, energy sup­ply will need to be dou­bled by 2025. And to bring the entire world up to a stan­dard of liv­ing equiv­a­lent to the U.S. or west­ern Europe by 2025 will require more than 10 times cur­rent energy use. Cur­rently, approx­i­mately 85 per­cent of global energy use comes from fos­sil fuels, oil, gas and coal, which are being rapidly depleted. The poten­tial to sub­sti­tute other sources is still uncertain.

The bot­tom line is that an enor­mous increase in energy sup­ply will be required to meet the demands of pro­jected pop­u­la­tion and eco­nomic growth. There appear to be only three options for the future includ­ing large increases in energy sup­ply, which would require research, devel­op­ment, and imple­men­ta­tion of new energy sources and tech­nolo­gies; large decreases in human pop­u­la­tion, which would allow exist­ing sup­plies to be appor­tioned among fewer peo­ple; and lastly, large decreases in per capita energy use.

“Unfor­tu­nately, essen­tially all mea­sures of stan­dard of liv­ing are cor­re­lated with both GDP and energy use, so it will be dif­fi­cult to improve qual­ity of life and lift devel­op­ing coun­tries out of poverty with­out jeop­ar­diz­ing cur­rent stan­dards of liv­ing in the most devel­oped coun­tries,” said Brown.

“We hope the evi­dence and inter­pre­ta­tions pre­sented in our paper will call atten­tion to the fun­da­men­tal rela­tion­ship between energy and eco­nomic growth that has been largely unap­pre­ci­ated by tra­di­tional econ­o­mists and sus­tain­abil­ity scientists.”

To lis­ten to an inter­view with lead author and UNM Dis­tin­guished Pro­fes­sor of Biol­ogy James Brown visit: Exam­in­ing the Future of Energy Use.

To read the paper, visit: Ener­getic Lim­its to Eco­nomic Growth.

The paper is a prod­uct of an infor­mal work­ing group in the Uni­ver­sity of New Mexico’s Pro­gram in Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary Bio­log­i­cal and Bio­med­ical Sci­ences or PIBBS, funded by the Howard Hughes Med­ical Insti­tute and the National Insti­tutes of Health. Group mem­bers include James H. Brown, William R. Burn­side, Ana D. David­son, John P. DeLong, William C. Dunn, Mar­cus J. Hamil­ton, Nor­man Mercado-Silva, Jef­frey C. Nekola, Jor­dan G. Okie, William H. Woodruff and Wenyun Zuo.

Media con­tact: Steve Carr (505) 277‑1821; e-mail: scarr@unm.edu